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But why does the existence of the Principle of Good
necessarily comport the existence of a Principle of Evil? Is it
because the All necessarily comports the existence of Matter?
Yes: for necessarily this All is made up of contraries: it could
not exist if Matter did not. The Nature of this Kosmos is,
therefore, a blend; it is blended from the Intellectual-Principle
and Necessity: what comes into it from God is good; evil is from
the Ancient Kind which, we read, is the underlying Matter not yet
brought to order by the Ideal-Form.
But, since the expression "this place" must be taken to mean the
All, how explain the words "mortal nature"?
The answer is in the passage [in which the Father of Gods
addresses the Divinities of the lower sphere], "Since you possess
only a derivative being, you are not immortals... but by my power
you shall escape dissolution."
The escape, we read, is not a matter of place, but of acquiring
virtue, of disengaging the self from the body; this is the escape
from Matter. Plato explains somewhere how a man frees himself and
how he remains bound; and the phrase "to live among the gods"
means to live among the Intelligible-Existents, for these are the
Immortals.
There is another consideration establishing the necessary
existence of Evil.
Given that The Good is not the only existent thing, it is
inevitable that, by the outgoing from it or, if the phrase be
preferred, the continuous down-going or away-going from it, there
should be produced a Last, something after which nothing more can
be produced: this will be Evil.
As necessarily as there is Something after the First, so
necessarily there is a Last: this Last is Matter, the thing which
has no residue of good in it: here is the necessity of Evil.
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